CDC seven boosts ambisonics at Glastonbury's Glade Stage

Funktion-One rental house and sound production company, Sound-Services Ltd, worked together with the loudspeaker company to produce the Funktion-One ‘Experimental Ambisonic Soundfield’ for The Glade Stage – the major electronic and dance music stage – at The Glastonbury Festival.

The Funktion-One Evo Touring system, comprising a main-stage FOH system with four additional positions; the six loudspeaker positions arranged in a perfect hexagon 36 meters in diameter, was installed to create the ‘Experimental Ambisonic Soundfield’, with various sounds emanating from particular loudspeaker positions.

The complete CDC seven mix system included a CDC I/O 6448 stagebox and CDC MC Dante Bridge. The 96 input, 56 buss CDC seven features a 36 fader, dual 23.5 inch HD touch screen hardware control surface. A notable performance feature is the proprietary MegaCOMMS HD audio protocol. With a total through-system propagation delay from on-stage inputs to outputs, including all console processing and A-D / D-A conversions, in 37 samples (@ 96kHz) – under 400μs – it is said to be the industry’s lowest latency protocol.

Additionally, MegaCOMMS synchronises all audio samples before summing, resulting in absolute phase coherency at all outputs. Sound-Services’ FOH engineers Flynn McBurney and Danny Cooklin described the resulting sonic performance as “out of this world!”

The Glade Stage featured a diverse roster of artists including house act Paranoid London, melodic house duo Gorgon City, Steve Hillage’s trance band System 7, The Orb, prog house duo Way Out West, ska legends The Beat, and tech-house duo Layo and Bushwacka. Festivities were brought to a close on the Saturday night with back-to-back sets from renowned progressive house DJs Sasha and John Digweed.

“We were nervous at first about using a brand new desk on a show of this size but after hearing it on a demo, we decided that we couldn’t do without it,” remarked Sound-Services managing director, Curtis Gilmore. “The sound is so pure and clear. It is definitely one of the best sounding shows that we have been a part of and the Cadac CDC seven played a huge part in this. We look forward to using this desk at many shows in the future.”